Wall Street Serves Up TACO For Trump — But He’s Not Hungry For It

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC — There’s a new flavor on Wall Street, and Donald Trump’s not biting.

The nickname is “TACO trade,” and no, it’s not about Tuesday dinners or tortilla deals. It stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out,” a cheeky acronym traders have cooked up to describe the president’s habit of threatening sky-high tariffs, only to fold faster than a soft-shell taco under pressure.

Unsurprisingly, Trump isn’t exactly hungry for the comparison.

“Oh, I chicken out? Isn’t that nice,” he shot back at a reporter on May 28, when pressed about the term making the rounds among financial analysts. He then launched into a defense of his flip-flops on tariffs, most recently slashing China duties and kicking the European Union deadline down the road—again.

“You had a dead country. Stone cold dead. And now we’re negotiating. That’s called strategy,” Trump insisted. “Not chickening out.”

The “TACO” acronym was served up this month by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, who noted that investors have learned to treat Trump’s tariff tantrums as a kind of economic piñata: buy the dip when he talks tough, cash in when he walks it back.

And walk it back he has—more than 50 times, according to The Washington Post, which tallied every tariff tweak, reversal, and re-reversal since Trump took office. From “Liberation Day,” when he unleashed a flurry of global import taxes, to last week’s sudden climbdown from a proposed 50% EU tariff, the Trump administration’s trade stance has been about as stable as a taco in a wind tunnel.

Trump pushed back. “They say I’m too tough, and then they say I’m chicken? Pick one!” he huffed. “I reduced tariffs after China opened up. I extended the EU deadline because they said, ‘Please, can we talk?’”